Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Members of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee voiced their dissatisfaction that new tax regulations for a new council tax benefit scheme for Welsh councils were not available bilingually.

The committee members scrutinised the new regulations on 17 December 2012.

The regulations caused a political storm during the last plenary session of this term, when AMs refused to vote them through saying they had not had sufficient time to scrutinise them.

The government agreed to a delay, with the Assembly being recalled from its Christmas recess on December 19th to vote them through.

This also enabled AMs on the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee to examine them in detail.

Assembly commission legal advisers raised a number of drafting issues relating to the regulations.

Welsh Conservative AM Suzy Davies and Plaid Cymru AM Simon Thomas raised queries about why the regulations had not been translated into Welsh by the government and committee members resolved to write to ministers to ask when they would be translated.

The regulations bring in a new system of council tax benefits for each of Wales' 22 local authorities.

In order to get agreement from opposition parties, the Welsh Government has introduced a "sunset" clause which means the regulations will be revisited in a year's time for any amendments needed to be made.

Committee chair David Melding criticised the "irregular procedure" in terms of how late the regulations had been tabled.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.